Inglath Cooper - The Lost Daughter Of Pigeon Hollow

She raised an eyebrow. “Am I?”

“Not about the obvious, no. Can we sit in your car?”

She dropped her head back, studied the night sky. She finally let her gaze meet his and said, “Why don’t we just end this here when we can both still say it was fun?”

“Willa. There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

The seriousness in his voice brought her up short. “What?”

“Not here. This would be better in private.”

“Why can’t you say it here?”

A man and woman in twin Stetsons walked by, singing an off-key George Strait tune, slightly drunk smiles on their faces. They both eyed Willa and Owen with curiosity.

“All right,” she said and headed for the Wagoneer. She got in the driver’s side, the door squeaking in protest. He went around and opened the passenger door, sliding into the seat, making the vehicle seem much smaller. She rolled down her window, feeling a sudden need for air.

“I came here to see you,” he said.

The words hung there between them, something in his voice making her stomach drop. “What do you mean?”

He reached in his pocket, pulled out a sealed envelope, handed it to her. “This is for you.”

She turned it over. Her name was written in neat cursive on one side. “What is it?”

“A letter. From your father.”

She dropped the envelope as if it had suddenly ignited. “What are you talking about?”

“He asked me to come and see you. He’s a very old friend of my family.”

She slowly shook her head back and forth. “That’s ridiculous.”

Owen said nothing for a moment. “It’s also true.”

Impossible. She had a father who wanted to see her? Her father had died years ago. And if her mother had been accurate in her portrayal of him, it had been no great loss to the world. “I’m afraid you must have me confused with someone else. My father is dead.”

“I don’t know what you’ve been told,” he said. “But there’s no confusion.”

“This has to be a mistake.” Her brain tried to process the information, sorted through the bits and pieces her mother had meted out during Willa’s childhood about the man who had been her father. Which wasn’t much. The one subject Tanya Addison had chosen not to discuss except for the times when Willa’s need to know something, anything about her father, pressed her to dole out just enough to stop the questions.

“No mistake,” he said.

“If I have a father, why didn’t he come himself?” she asked, unable to keep the skepticism out of her voice.

Owen’s gaze cut to the parking lot. He rubbed a thumb across the back of his hand, his voice somber when he said, “Because he’s sick.”

“Sick?”

“He had a very serious heart attack a couple of weeks ago. It was impossible for him to come, so he asked me.”

“Why you?”

“I guess I’m someone he trusts.”

She gripped both hands on the steering wheel, as if it might steady the tilt of disbelief inside her. “Why now? After all these years?”

“The letter should tell you what you want to know.”

Willa picked the envelope up again, stared at the handwriting. “This is why you came here.”

“Yes.”

“And why you—” She waved a hand at the building they’d just come from, humiliation settling in the pit of her stomach.

“I think that was more about something else,” he said, his voice softening. “Something I had no right to pursue.”

She wondered what he meant by that, but at the same time did not want to know. He probably had a wife and five kids waiting at home for him. A flat feeling of outrage slid in behind the humiliation.

“Read the letter tonight,” he said. “Then we’ll talk again.”

He got out of the Wagoneer and shut the door with a firm click.

She sat for a few moments, stunned, then finally started the engine and pulled out of the Hoot ’n’ Holler parking lot. The Wagoneer muffler clanked on the pavement, a shower of sparks visible in the rearview mirror.

Behind them, he stood, watching her go.

SO MUCH FOR well-laid plans.

Owen didn’t think he could have bumbled it more if he’d tried.

Willa’s reaction to learning about Charles wasn’t exactly surprising. She had a father she had not known existed. Who wouldn’t be blown out of the water by something like that?

A brown pickup truck with tires that looked like they had been injected with steroids roared into the parking lot, came to a rumbling halt. Two guys in bandanas and muscle shirts got out, swaggered inside.

Owen headed for his own vehicle, got in and slapped a palm against the steering wheel. He had asked Willa out tonight with the intention of softening the news he’d come here to deliver. So how did he explain the detour he’d taken in there with the dancing and flirting? And that kiss in the parking lot. No one had ever accused him of being the straightest arrow around, but he did have a girlfriend, and it wasn’t his style to cheat.

Still, there was no getting around the fact that he had wanted to dance with Willa tonight. That he had, without doubt, wanted to kiss her.

He had been around the block enough times to have had a lot of firsts. He’d known his share of women. But the energy between the two of them in there hadn’t felt like anything he recognized.

He ran a hand across his face. Or maybe it was just that his back was to the wall, and he was looking for an exit. Ten days to make up his mind. He glanced at his watch. Past midnight. Make that nine days.

The future had never looked less clear.

ONE DINNER. One dance. It was always the little decisions that led to the big trouble.

Willa drove a few miles before letting herself glance at the letter on the passenger seat, no idea what to make of any of it.

Owen Miller had been a messenger, a delivery service. His asking her out tonight had nothing whatsoever to do with strawberries, or dancing a shade too close, or anything at all resembling romance.

Cheeks flaming, she fumbled to redo the button of her blouse with one hand.

A date. She’d thought it was a date. And he’d been nothing more than a messenger.

Tipp’s Minute Market sat just ahead on the right. Willa hit her blinker, turned in and pulled underneath a parking-lot light. She picked up the letter from the passenger seat, held it for a moment, then began to read.

Dear Willa,

I know you have no idea who I am, and most likely at this point, have no desire to. At least that’s what I’ve been telling myself for too many years to count.

I also know that your mother never told you about me. But I am your father, and I would very much like to meet you.

I sincerely hope you will indulge an old man’s wish and return to Lexington with Owen so that we might have a chance to talk.

Sincerely,

Charles Hartmore

It had to be a joke, and yet it didn’t read like one.

But it couldn’t possibly apply to her. Her father had died. What reason would her mother have had to lie about that?